


Ruin

by Tokyo_the_Glaive



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 07:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7304359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tokyo_the_Glaive/pseuds/Tokyo_the_Glaive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mozu's war isn't over yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ruin

When the war finally ends, Mozu isn’t sure what to do with herself.  Everyone’s celebrating, feasting and drinking and shouting _for peace, for peace_ , but Mozu doesn’t feel any different.  She thinks of her village, a dusty, abandoned wreck on the western edge of Hoshido.  She hasn’t been back since Corrin’s group found her, but in her mind, she sees the corpses of her loved ones, torn to bits or else stomped to a bloody mush.  She can see her mother without so much as closing her eyes.

It’s enough that Mozu doesn’t want to celebrate.  This was never her fight.  Her war isn’t over yet.

* * *

It’s a good week’s walk back to the wreckage of the village, and Mozu makes the journey alone.  Corrin offers to come help, but Mozu knows full well that Corrin can’t actually do so.  There are kingdoms to rebuild and people to reassure, and none of that can be done in a backwater village with a single inhabitant.

Mozu walks by herself, a dwindling bag of supplies across her back.  She’s lucky in that the weather holds up well: the days are sunny and just the right side of too warm.  The birds are singing, sweeping low across verdant valleys bursting with flowers in full bloom.  Insects buzz and whirr, and at night, Mozu can see bats darting near the edges of woods, searching for mosquitoes.  Mozu comes across several natural springs that sparkle in the sun, their waters clear and cold and full of fish.  She catches them with her bare hands and cooks them over small fires, plucking flesh from bone carefully, just like her mother taught her.

Nights on the road are hard for Mozu, though the first is the worst.  She hasn’t been alone since her village was destroyed, and to be as alone as she is frightens her.  As far as Mozu knows, there isn’t anyone around to help her if she needs it—in fact, there won’t be anyone at all until she gets close to her village.  There had been a cluster of them near hers, she remembers, though she wonders if the rest suffered the same fate as her own.  If they did, she doesn’t want to know.  There’s isn’t enough space left in her heart for more sadness, more pain.

Eventually, though, Mozu arrives home—or, where _home_ used to be.  She’s out of supplies, but she’s always been a spectacular hunter, so she’s not the slightest bit hungry.  Instead, she feels sick.

There are no bodies left to bury, but there are bits of skeletons, bleached white by the sun but stained by the dirt.  Many are broken.  All are picked clean.

It hurts because she doesn’t know which bones belonged to which person in her village.  She can’t remember who fell where, but even if she could, the bones have been moved, likely by the same scavengers that undoubtedly swept through after Mozu left and the Faceless were no more.

It’s not just the bones of the villagers, though—it’s the bones of the village that are shattered and in disarray.  The bridges are rotted through and only one of the houses remains standing.  The fields are all overgrown and chock full of weeds, and there isn’t a farm animal in sight.  Truly, nothing remains of her village except the memory of what it used to be.

Mozu has to sit down to keep from falling over.  There’s so much to be done, and there’s only one of her.  She could work day and night, but whatever she accomplishes nature would undo in a matter of days.  She can’t possibly repair the buildings and the bridges, clear up and replant the fields, go to the market (if it’s still standing) and bargain for supplies while keeping animals like boar and bears away from the perimeter.  Even if she did somehow manage all of that, it wouldn’t resurrect her dead friends.  She would be alone.

She stares at the wreckage, heartsick and guilt-ridden, until nightfall.She takes refuge in the single remaining building, hunkering down for a long night.She sleeps, and thankfully, she does not dream.

* * *

In the morning, Mozu rises to greet the bones.  The sight of them in the early light makes her feel as sick as she had felt when she had seen them properly for the first time, and it’s that feeling that tells her she has to do something about it. 

It’s almost without thinking that she gathers the bones together into one big pile.She piles them close to the old village cemetery, in a field that had remained empty for as long as she could remember.She and other children in the village used to gather the seeds of wildflowers and strew them there so that it would explode into a sea of vibrant hues every spring and summer.The elders had approved because they saw it as tribute to the dead and offering for the afterlife.

Her village had stressed the importance of the dead, particularly the burial.The deceased would return to the earth, nourish it and become one with it.Mozu doesn’t know if dry bones constitute sustenance for a ravaged earth, but she’s going to try nonetheless.

By the time the sun’s at it’s highest, Mozu’s learned the feel of worn bone against her hand by heart.She knows the contours of the vertebrae better than any physician just as she knows the curve of the ribs and the weight of a skull.When she has everything she can find all together, Mozu scours the wreckage of the village until she finds an old shovel.She digs graves, one for each of the fallen villagers.Even though it’s unlikely that animals will turn the ground for them, Mozu digs them deep, as deep as she is tall.

The work takes days, and it’s hard labor under the hot sun.Her fingers are calloused from the war and from work, but the shovel Mozu found is nonetheless heavy in her hands and cuts into her skin.Splinters line her palms, and she picks them out as best as she can at the end of each day.She hunts and builds fires and sets traps. She survives.

When the digging is done, Mozu begins the process of burying her fallen friends.It’s impossible to tell who’s who, but she picks out bones that make a rough skeleton and lays them to rest each in their own grave with care.She picks flowers to strew over top of them before she piles on the dirt.It’s not as hard to bury them, somehow.Mozu feels hollow.

At the end of the fifth day, there are rectangular swaths of overturned dirt, each a grave.The field around it is razed, still not recovered from the battle so long ago.Mozu promises the silent field that she’ll gather the seeds of wildflowers and strew them like she used to, so that they could grow with the harvest.She would not let this be the end.

**Author's Note:**

> I've actually written more to this--and I intended there to be more to this--but I realized that I had no clear direction. So here, have some angst.


End file.
